[Qemu-devel] Re: [SeaBIOS] [PATCHv6 00/16] boot order specification

[Gleb Natapov]

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 08:00:29PM +0100, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Gleb Natapov wrote:
> > There is no way for qemu to know about BCVs or BEVs
> 
> This is very much the key point.
> 
> In order to have command line control over the boot process, the
> machine and the firmware must agree on things.
> 
> I see two options:
> 
> 1. QEMU works very very hard to provide a machine that will result in
> a particular BBS program flow in firmware, in the end resulting in
> the desired device being used for booting - as long as QEMU and the
> firmware happen to have the same understanding of the BBS.
> 
Since qemu knows nothing about BCVs and BEVs it can't implement 1 since
it can't know what BBS flow will look like in Seabios.

> 2. QEMU passes boot instructions to the firmware based on immediate,
> common, structured data.
What is this "immediate, common, structured data"? This is the crux of
the problem really.

> 
> The first option seems disgusting to me, because it has many
> drawbacks and no benefits.
> 
> The second option requires inventing something that goes beyond the
> established BIOS standards, maybe a reason for it to see fierce
> resistance, but it is the only thing that makes sense.
> 
> Specifying boot device using PCI BDF is a great example of using
> common structured data. That BDF exists both in machine and firmware
> data models. The scope of BBS is limited to the firmware, so it is
> not really practical for creating consistency in a dynamic machine.
> 
B from BDF does not exists in machine data model.

--
                        Gleb.